Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

RE: Strategies (was: Re: Improv loops (was Re: Upcoming gig)



You've sort of depicted the idiom of Jazz, Per. Melody, tension and
release, improvisation, not too sweet or sappy (like Kenny G). In jazz a
lot of the interaction and musicican conversations between musicians is
about melody and harmony, the function of chords, direction, resolution,
etc. Heck, in hard core bebop in the 50s, sax players used to play with
just a bass player and drummer...no chordal instrument. They didn't need
them. When soloist do their thing, the piano or guitar player comping
tries to compliment them, match their coloration, alteration, and
syncopation...they listen really hard to hear these nuances and work
with them...use chordal call and response, and so on.  To me, YOU think
like a improvisatioal jazz musician, not a pop musician or conventional
musician -  and I place myself in that category as well not because of
my influences alone, but because I like melody and telling a story with
a solo rather than just playing layers upon layers of textural
backgrounds, but "outside" melody, which is relative to a tonal center
and heavy on the tension side. Whole books have been written about this
tonal center concept and tension/release...and more importanly the
target note method, where a melody starts outside the tonal center but
"directs" itself toward a resolution point. These are all concepts that
jazz musicians, whether traditional, avant-garde, free, bebop, etc.
understand, and which you seeem to grasp quite well. You can listen to a
musician at a performance, and usually tell within the first 10 minuted
whether they think like a jazz musician or a conventional or pop
musician. It's not a comparison to degrade, only a factual one based on
technique and use of melody and harmony.

I wish you played more avant-garde jazz, Per. I bet you would kick butt
at it. Maybe you have, but I haven't found your sound clips.

Cheers,

Kris 

-----Original Message-----
From: Per Boysen [mailto:per@boysen.se] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 1:14 AM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Re: Strategies (was: Re: Improv loops (was Re: Upcoming gig)

On Jun 14, 2005, at 23:57, Edwin Hurwitz wrote:

> I am curious how many of us use looping as a way of playing more 
> "conventional" music and how many of us are making the beeps and 
> bloops?


I'm not sure that I correctly understand the (eventual?) difference
between those two concepts, but I can try to answer for myself. I guess
I usually do both when looping. As an improvising musician I have always
tended to work a lot with melodies. That's something that others might
like but I have always felt a bit alienated by the melodic side, maybe
being afraid of the music to stand out as "too sweet". So to compensate
that melodic side, that I seem not being able to escape, I have always
put effort into developing an interesting tone; be it in physical
instruments that I play or by plain programming of  electronics. "The
beeps and bloops" is one way to create such an interesting tone. Does
that qualify me as a player of "conventional" music? ;-)

To be a bit more general I must say that I like listening to music that
appears to lack melodic elements. But I don't like listening to music
that have no direction, no question and answer dialogue, no tension
building up and no letting go of tension. I like to think that the
difference between music and noise is that music does imply directions
in movement, which noise doesn't. I like listening to noise as well,
BTW. But I find it very difficult to play noise, there is always a
melodic element creeping in to it. So, to use that flavor you have to
call in the machines. Does that make me a beep' n blooper?

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.looproom.com (international)
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
--->  iTunes Music Store (digital)
www.cdbaby.com/perboysen